Child labor: data in Brazil and worldwide

O workchildish it's a terrible reality that insists on stealing the childhood of millions of children every year. We will not talk here about teenagers who help their own family in family or domestic businesses part-time and in satisfactory risk control conditions. We will talk here about the exploration of child labor force and the child's exposure, usually due to the social vulnerability, risky situations, degrading working conditions, unhealthy conditions and exploitation and moral and sexual harassment.

Read too: Informal work - labor activity that is not regulated by the State

Child labor today

child labor is not something new in human history. At Antique and in slave societies, children worked from an early age. At Middle Ages, child labor was a way to supplement the family income of most families, who lived in extreme poverty. This practice was still very common until the beginning of the 20th century., when it starts to be questioned by the advance of discussions on the universal right to education and the rights of children and adolescents.

Child labor is still a reality to be fought in Brazil and in the world, especially in developing countries. [1]

Despite being a reprehensible and criminal practice in most countries, in addition to being supervised by international agencies linked to the United Nations (UN) through the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), child labor still persists.

Children and adolescents who are currently in a condition of labor exploitation also live in social vulnerability situation. Coming from extremely poor families in places of high misery and social inequality, or even orphans in places where there is no effective help, millions of children and adolescents are forced to work.

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Many of the exploited children are under 10 years of age. They work in situations and places that pose risks to their health and physical and social integrity, in addition to having their childhood stolen and not having access to the universal right to education. Commonly, exploited children and adolescents exercise

• domestic work (cleaners, washerwomen, cooks, gardeners and “helpers” who repair family homes);
• rural work (they work in plantations — in Brazil, they are usually sugarcane plantations);
• street work (shine shoes, selling candy, or cleaning car windows at traffic lights, or simply juggling and begging);
• hazardous work in the field (usually located in charcoal works, potteries and mines);
• the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents.

The latter is one of the worst forms of child exploitation, as, in addition to sequelae (loss of childhood, educational exclusion and damage to health), still causes irreversible psychological damage in children and adolescents who are subjected to such a situation. Child sexual exploitation occurs when a child or adolescent is forced to engage in sexual practices in exchange for money, gifts or some kind of benefit to the exploiter.

Child labor exposes children and adolescents to physical and psychological harm, in addition to robbing them of their right to education and childhood. [2]

According to convention 138 of the International Labor Organization (ILO)|1|, child labor is that performed by children and adolescents below the minimum hiring age set out by local legislation. In the case of places where minors can work, provided that certain requirements are met, child labor is the one that violates these exceptional rules.

See more: Human Rights - category of rights guaranteed to any member of humanity

child labor in the world

The International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency linked to the UN, has been launching measures to eradicate child labor in the world for decades. The signatory countries of the treaties on measures to eradicate child labor undertake to criminalize, supervise and punish those who use child labor and who is responsible for the exploitation of children. However, the world is still far from eradicating this practice.

According to the ILO, in a 2016 survey|2|, 152 million children and adolescents between the ages of five and 17 were being forced to work in the world. According to the same survey, 40 million people were victims of work analogous to slavery (the so-called modern slavery), with around 10 million of this contingent being smaller.

THE The majority of child victims of slave labor in the world were girls. (around 71%), with most of them being sexually exploited (around 99% of victims of sexual exploitation were women and girls).

Girls are the majority in child labor exploitation rates due to sexual exploitation. [3]

Child labor in Brazil

Although Brazil is one of the countries that assumed, together with the ILO and the UN, the commitment to eradicate work by the year 2025, we still have a lot to do to eradicate this practice in our territory. The first step has been taken here since 1990, with the enactment of the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA), which prohibits child labor, and Federal Constitution of 1988, what criminalizes the exploitation of child labor.

Despite current legislation, the National Household Sampling Survey (PNAD) of the IBGE 2016|3| showed that Brazil had around 1.8 million children and adolescents working. Of these:

• only about 800 thousand were hired according to the rules for hiring minors in our country, which does not constitute exploitation;
• around 808,000 teenagers between 14 and 17 years old worked without a formal contract;
• about 190,000 children under the age of 14 were working.

Child labor according to ECA

According to the ECA and Brazilian legislation, it is prohibited to hire children under 14 years of age. teenagers between 14 and 17 years can work, as long as they have their signed license and work in a special registration category, that of apprentice, in which they can learn a trade and work part-time, so that their studies are not harmed. They must also be enrolled and attending school and cannot engage in risky activities, degrading activities and night work.

The exploitation of child labor is a crime in Brazil, but there is still a lack of supervision and assistance for children.

See the articles in chapter V of the ECA that deal with child labour:

• Art. 60. Any work for children under the age of fourteen is prohibited, except as an apprentice.
• Art. 61. The protection of adolescents' work is regulated by special legislation, without prejudice to the provisions of this Law.
• Art. 62. Learning is considered to be the technical-professional training provided in accordance with the guidelines and bases of the education legislation in force.
• Art. 63. Technical-professional training will comply with the following principles:

I - guarantee of access and mandatory attendance to regular education;

II - activity compatible with the adolescent's development;

III - special time for the exercise of activities.

• Art. 64. Adolescents up to fourteen years of age are entitled to an apprenticeship grant.
• Art. 65. The adolescent apprentice, aged over fourteen, is guaranteed labor and social security rights.
• Art. 66. Adolescents with disabilities are guaranteed protected work.
• Art. 67. A teenager employed, an apprentice, in a family working regime, a student at a technical school, assisted by a governmental or non-governmental entity, is prohibited from working:

I - night, held between 10:00 pm one day and 5:00 am the following day;

II - dangerous, unhealthy or painful;

III - carried out in places that are harmful to their training and to their physical, psychological, moral and social development;

IV - held at times and places that do not allow for school attendance.

• Art. 68. The social program based on educational work, under the responsibility of a non-governmental or non-governmental entity profit-making, must ensure that the adolescent participates in training conditions for the exercise of regular paid activity.

§ 1º Educational work is understood to be a work activity in which the pedagogical requirements relating to the student's personal and social development prevail over the productive aspect.

§ 2º The remuneration that adolescents receive for their work or participation in the sale of the products of their work does not disfigure the educational character.

• Art. 69. Adolescents have the right to professional training and protection at work, observing the following aspects, among others:

I - respect for the peculiar condition of a developing person;

II - professional training adequate to the labor market.

Grades

|1| access the convention clicking here.

|2| Access the data displayed by the platform "Rede Peteca - Enough of Child Labor" clicking here.

|3| Access the research data on the “Third Sector Observatory” portal clicking here.

Image credits

[1] Dietmar Temps / Shutterstock

[2] StevenK / Shutterstock

[3] Stanislav Beloglazov / Shutterstock

by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor